The past decade has witnessed a growing trend to make the vehicles on the roads smarter and offer better driving experience. Equipped with on-board computer, wireless devices (e.g. radio transceiver, sensing devices) and rechargeable battery, a typical car or truck is likely able to interact with the Internet and associated services. As technology is moving closer and closer to embedding sophisticated resources in individual vehicles, it is fair to assume in the near future even the low-end vehicles will be coupled with on-board wireless communication devices and data collection devices. WO 2012/076012 describes a distributed computing system using the idle processing power of wind turbines.
The initial views of leveraging vehicular networking systems were to keep the drivers informed about potential safety risks and enhance their awareness of traffic condition. However, the huge array of on-board capacities is not likely fully utilized, because the content delivery efficiency is bounded by the fleeting and dynamic connectivity between moving vehicles. Compared with moving vehicles, their stopped counterparts show great advantages in communication.